The Call to Radical Love
Gospel Reflection for Tuesday, June 17th, 2025 - Matthew 5:43-48
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you…”
These words of Jesus are not merely a moral challenge, they are a radical invitation to participate in the divine life. They don’t call us to ‘niceness’ or ‘tolerance’; they call us to love as God loves.
In Catholic theology, charity, caritas, is more than mere affection or goodwill. It is a theological virtue infused by God that enables us to love others for His sake.1 This includes the friend and the foe, the kind and the cruel, the one who speaks peace and the one who slanders behind our back.
And Jesus reveals this divine love in its fullness from the Cross.2 While bleeding and mocked, He prays “Forgive them.” This isn’t weakness, it’s divine strength. It’s the perfection He calls us to: not flawlessness, but fullness of love.
It’s hard to deny we live in a divided world today. Lines are drawn quickly, often in ways that feel permanent - politics, ideology, parenting, even within the Church. And in this climate, the command to love our enemies can feel naive at best, impossible at worst.
But this is precisely where Christ calls us to stand out, not by louder arguments or sharper comebacks, but by the radical witness to caritas — charity.
Loving our enemies doesn’t mean agreement or passivity. It means refusing to let hatred set the terms. It means choosing the Cross over comfort, reconciliation over resentment. This kind of love — costly, courageous, Christ-like — isn’t weakness.
It sounds impossible, but Jesus never commands without offering the grace to fulfill it. He gives us Himself, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity, in the Eucharist. He transforms our hearts slowly, over time, if we let Him.
So today, who is God inviting you to love in your life? Who are you being called to pray for? Not because it’s easy, but because it’s holy.
Jesus said to his disciples:
"You have heard that it was said,
You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.But I say to you, love your enemies
and pray for those who persecute you,
that you may be children of your heavenly Father,
for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good,
and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.For if you love those who love you, what recompense will you have?
Do not the tax collectors do the same?
And if you greet your brothers only,
what is unusual about that?
Do not the pagans do the same?
So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect."
Wow, you have said it all and well! We must heed it, live it and be the means of the Holy Spirit to love and change the world thru us! Thank you with all my heart!!!!!!